Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 4 - Read online

IN THE AUTUMN DUSK Angelique strolled on the Pont-Neuf. She had come to buy flowers and took advantage of the opportunity to wander from shop to shop.
She stopped before Big Matthieu’s platform, and her heart gave a jump. Big Matthieu was pulling a tooth from a man kneeling before him. The patient’s mouth was open and distended by the operator’s forceps, but Angelique recognised his stiff, straw-coloured hair, and his shabby black coat. It was the man of the hay-boat.
The young woman elbowed her way through to the front row.
Although it was rather cold, Big Matthieu was sweating profusely.
“Venire-saint-gris, as the fellow across the street would say,1 this is a hard one. My God, it’s hard 1”
He paused in his labour, to wipe his brow, removed the instrument from his victim’s mouth and asked him:
“Does it hurt?”
The other turned his face towards the people who were watching, smiled and shook his head. There was no doubt. It was he, with his pallid face, his long mouth, his grimaces of a dazed loon!
“You see, ladies and gentlemen!” Big Matthieu bawled. “Isn’t it amazing? Here’s a man who’s not in pain, though, believe me, his teeth are like granite! And by what miracle is he not in pain? Thanks to this miraculous ointment with which I rubbed his gum before the operation. This little bottle, ladies and gentlemen, contains oblivion for all ailments. You feel no pain with me, because of this miraculous ointment, and you have your teeth pulled out without even noticing it. Come, my friend, let’s get back to work.”
The other eagerly opened his mouth. With much swearing and groan¬ing, the quack grappled again with the recalcitrant jaw. At last, with a shout of triumph, Big Matthieu brandished the obstreperous tooth at the end of his tongs.
“Here we are! Did it hurt, my friend?”
The other got up, still smiling. He made a sign of denial.
“Can I say more? Here’s a man whose ordeal you could see for your¬selves, and who is walking away fit and fresh. Thanks to the miraculous ointment, which I am the only one to use among empirical practitioners, nobody will ever again have the slightest hesitation in getting rid of those stinking stumps that disgrace the mouth of an honest Christian. You’ll go to have your tooth pulled out with a smile. Don’t hesitate any longer, ladies and gentlemen. Come forward! There’s no more pain. Pain is dead."
Meanwhile, the customer had put on his hat with its pointed crown and clambered down from the platform. Angelique followed him. She would have liked to go up to him, but wondered whether he would recognise her.
He walked along the Quai des Morfondus, below the Palace of Justice. At a few steps’ distance, Angelique saw his weird, lean silhouette floating in the mist rising from the Seine. Once again, he did not seem quite real. He walked very slowly, stopping, then walking on again. • *
1 The favourite oath of Henri IV, whose statue stands on the Pont-Neuf.
Suddenly he vanished. Angflique gave a little cry. But she realised that the man had merely gone down die three or four steps from the quayside to the river-bank. Without a moment’s thought, she, too, descended the steps and almost knocked against the stranger leaning against the quay wall. He was bent double and groaning hoarsely.
“What is it? What’s wrong with you?” asked Angelique. “Are you ill?”
“Oh! I am dying,” he moaned feebly. “That brute almost wrenched my head off. And my jaw is dislocated, I am sure.”
He spat out a thin trickle of blood.
“But you said it didn’t hurt?”
“I didn’t say anything. It would have been quite beyond me. Happily Big Matthieu paid me well for playing this little comedy.”
He groaned, spat again. She thought he was going to faint.
“It’s stupid! You should never have accepted it,” she said.
“I haven’t had anything to eat for three days.”
Angllique put her arms around the stranger’s emaciated torso. He was taller than she, but so light that she felt almost strong enough to carry his poor carcass.
“Come on, you’ll eat well tonight,” she promised him. “And it won’t cost you anything. Not a sol . . . or a tooth.”
Back at the inn, she dashed into the kitchen, looking for something that might suit a victim of starvation and the tooth-puller’s care. There was a meat broth and a fine ox tongue garnished with cucumbers and gherkins. She brought him all this, together with a pitcher of red wine and a big jar of mustard.
“Go ahead and start with this. We’ll see to the rest later.”
The poor devil’s long nose quivered.
“Oh! the subtle perfume of soups,” the stranger murmured, sitting up as if he was coming back to life. “Blessed essence of the vegetable gods!”
She left him in order that he might sate his hunger undisturbed. After giving her orders and seeing that everything was ready for the arrival of customers, she went into the pantry to prepare a sauce. It was a tiny room into which she withdrew whenever she had to concoct a particularly difficult dish.
After a few moments, the door opened and her guest passed his head through the opening.
“Tell me, my dear, you are the little beggar-wench who knows Latin, aren’t you?”
“Iam . . . and I am not,” said Angelique, who did not know whether she was cross or pleased that he had recognised her. “I am now the niece of Maitre Bourjus, the landlord of this tavern.”
“In other words, you are no longer under the fearful jurisdiction of Monsieur Calembredaine?”
“God forbid!”
He slipped into the room, walked up to her with his lithe step, took her by the waist and kissed her lips.
“Well! You seem to have regained your strength all right!” said Angelique when she could get her breath again.
“Who wouldn’t? I have been looking for you all over Paris for a long time, Marquise of the Angels!”
“Hush!” she said, looking around, frightened.
“Don’t be afraid. There are no constables in the dining-room. I didn’t see any and, believe me, I know them all. So, little wench, you know how to feather your nest, I can see. You had your fill of hay-boats? Ileft a pale, wasting, grimy little flower, who sobs in her sleep, and I find a plump good-wife, comfortably settled. . . . And yet it's you all right. Your lips are still as good, but they taste of cherries now, and not of bitter tears. Do come again. . . .”
“I am in a hurry,” said Angelique, pushing back the hands that tried to imprison her cheeks.
“Two seconds of bliss are worth two years of life. Besides, I’m still hungry, you know!”
“Do you want some pancakes and jam?”
“No, I want you. Seeing you and touching you is all I need to sate my appetite. I want your cherry lips, your peach-like cheeks. Everything about you is edible. One cannot dream of anything better for a famished poet. . . . Your flesh is tender. It makes me want to bite it. And you are warm . . . ! It's wonderful.”
“Oh! you are impossible!” she protested, freeing herself. “Your declarations, with their lyrical and vulgar hodge-podge, drive me mad!”
“That’s what I want. Come, don’t pretend you’re coy.”
With an imperious gesture which proved the return of his strength he pulled her towards him again and, throwing her head back into the crook of his arm, he started to kiss her.
The sound of a wooden ladle knocking hard against the table pulled them brutally apart.
“By Saint Jacques!” Maitre Bourjus was yelling. “It’s that accursed gazetteer! That devil’s henchman, that slanderer, in my house, in my pantry, making free with my wench! Out with you, marauder, or I’ll kick you right out into the street !”
“Have pity, sir, have pity on my pants! They are so worn already that your august foot might provide an indecent spectacle for the ladies.”
“Out of here, rascal, pen-pusher, nail-biter! You disgrace my shop with your rags full of holes and your mountebank’s hat.”
But the other, making faces, laughing and holding his threatened back¬side with both hands, had run towards the street-entrance. He thumbed his nose and disappeared.
Angelique said, a little cravenly:
“The fellow came into my pantry and I couldn’t get rid of him.”
“Hmm!” growled the innkeeper. “You didn’t seem so displeased for once. There, there, my dear, don’t protest. That isn’t what puts my back up: a little petting now and then livens up a pretty girl. But honesdy, Ang6lique, you disappoint me. Aren’t there plenty of respectable people patronising this place? Why do you have to pick a journalist?”
The King’s favourite, Mademoiselle de La Valliere, had a somewhat large mouth. She also had a slight limp. People said that this gave her a special gracefulness and did not prevent her from dancing delightfully, but the fact was there: she limped.
She had no bosom. People would compare her to Diana, talk of the charm of hermaphrodites, but the fact was there: she was flat-chested. Her skin was dry. The tears caused by the royal infidelities, humiliations at Court, and remorse had put dark rings around her eyes. She was becoming thin and dry. Finally, as a result of her second maternity, she suffered from an intimate disability of which Louis XIV alone knew the details. Louis XIV . . . and the Gutter-Poet.
And, out of all these hidden or admitted misfortunes, out of these physical handicaps, he made an astonishing pamphlet, full of wit, but so wicked and crude that even the least prudish citizens avoided showing copies to their wives, who promptly asked their servants for them.
If you limp and have just turned fifteen Have no bust to boast of, nor senses that are keen,
If for parents you have God knows whom,
If, a fresh maid, you make sons in the ante-room,
Then the first man in the realm to you will make love:
La Valliere is the proof thereof.
So the song began.
These lampoons could be found all over Paris, at the Hdtel Biron, where Louise de La Valliere was living, at the Louvre and even in the Queen’s apartment. The latter, on seeing her rival thus depicted, laughed for the first time in a long while and rubbed her little hands with joy.
Wounded and dying of shame, Mademoiselle de La Valliere flung herself in the first carriage that came along and asked to be taken to the convent of Chaillot, where she wanted to take the veil.
The King gave orders for her to return and show herself at Court. He sent Monsieur Colbert to fetch her. This recall was the result not so much of indignant tenderness as of the enraged defiance of a sovereign whom his people dared to make fun of, but who was beginning to fear that his mistress was no feather in his cap.
The smartest sleuths in the police were set in pursuit of the Gutter- Poet.
This time nobody doubted that he would be hanged.
Angelique was getting ready to go to bed in her little room in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois. Javotte had just withdrawn with a curtsy. The children were asleep.
Running feet were heard outside. The sounds were muffled by a thin film of snow that had begun to fall, very slowly, on this December night. There was a knocking at the door. Angelique slipped on her dressing- gown and went to pull back the peep-hole.
“Who is there?”
“Open quickly, little wench, quickly. The dog!”
Without taking time to think, Angelique pulled back the bolt. The journalist stumbled into her. At the same moment, a white mass rose out of the darkness, leaped and took him by the throat.
“Sorbonne!” shouted Angelique.
She dashed forward, and her hand touched the mastiff's wet pelt.
“Let him go, Sorbonne. Lassihn! Lassihnl”
Sorbonne growled, his fangs solidly dug into his victim’s collar. But after a moment Angelique’s voice sank into him. He wagged his tail and consented to release his prey, though continuing to growl.
The man gasped:
“I am dead!”
“No, you aren’t. Come in quickly.”
“The dog will stay outside the door and warn the policeman.”
“Come in, I tell you!”
She pushed him inside herself, then stayed in the archway^ pulling the door shut behind her. She held Sorbonne tightly by his collar. In the entrance of the porch she saw the snow swirl in the light of a lantern. She finally distinguished the approach of a muffled step, the step that one always heard following the dog, the step of the policeman Francois Desgrez.
Angelique stepped forward.
“Are you looking for your dog, Maitre Desgrez?”
He stopped, then he, too, stepped under the porch. She could not see his face.
“No,” he replied very calmly. “I am looking for a pamphleteer.” “Sorbonne was passing. Imagine, I used to know your dog. I called him and he came to me.”
“He must cettainly have been enchanted, Madame. You were taking a breath of air on your doorstep in this delightful weather?”
“I was just closing my door. But we are talking in the dark, Maitre Desgrez, and I am sure you can’t guess who I am.”
“I don’t have to guess, Madame, I know. I have known for quite some time that you live in this house, and as there isn’t a tavern in town that I do not know, I have seen you at ‘The Red Mask’. You call yourself Madame Morens and you have two children, the elder of whom is called Flori- mond.”
“One cannot hide anything from you. But since you know who I am, why did we have to meet by accident?”
“I was not certain that my paying a call would please you, Madame. The last time we saw each other, we parted on very bad terms.”
Her mind’s eye conjured up die night of her flight in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It seemed to her that not a drop of saliva was left in her mouth.
She asked in a toneless voice:
“What do you mean?”
“It was snowing as it is tonight, and the postern of the Temple was no less dark than your porch.”
Angelique smothered a sigh of relief.
“We weren’t on bad terms. We had been defeated, that isn’t the same thing, Maitre Desgrez.”
“You mustn’t call me Maitre any more, Madame, for I’ve sold my lawyer’s practice, and have been struck from the university roll. How¬ever, I sold it very well, and was able to buy the office of a police-captain, on the strength of which I devote myself to a more lucrative and no less useful task: the hunting down of wrongdoers and ill-intentioned in¬dividuals of this city. Thus, from the heights of eloquence I’ve sunk into the depths of silence.”
“You still talk just as well, Maitre Desgrez.”
“When the occasion arises. I then recapture a liking for oratorical phrases. This is no doubt why I have been specially charged to attend to those who indulge in incontinence of speech or writing: poets, journalists, pen-pushers of all types. Thus, tonight I am after a virulent personage, named Claude Le Petit, also called the Gutter-Poet. This chap will no doubt have occasion to bless you for your interference.”
“Why so?”
“Because you stopped us short while he went on running.”
“I apologise for having kept you.”
“Personally, I am delighted, although the small salon in which you are receiving me is not very cosy.”
“Forgive me. You must come again, Desgrez.”
“I shall, Madame.”
The snowflakes were falling more thickly. The policeman put up the collar of his coat, took a step, then stopped.
“Something has just come back to me,” he said. “This Gutter-Poet wrote some pretty cruel libels at the time of your husband’s trial. Let me see. . . .”
“Oh, stop it, for pity’s sake!” cried Angelique, putting her hands to her ears. “Don’t even mention those things. I no longer remember anything. I don’t want to remember. . . .”
“The past, then, is dead for you, Madame?”
“Yes, the past is dead!”
“It’s the best that could happen to it. I shall not mention it again. Good-bye,Madame,and . . . goodnight!”
Angelique, with chattering teeth, bolted the gate again. She was frozen to the marrow from standing in the cold, with no clothes on but her dressing-gown. And added to the cold was the emotion of having met Desgrez again and having heard his revelations.
She went back into the room and closed the door. The fair-haired man was sitting on the hearthstone, his arms clasped around his bony knees. He resembled a cricket.
The young woman leaned against the door. She said tonelessly:
“You are the Gutter-Poet?”
He smiled.
“Gutter? Certainly. Poet? Perhaps.”
“You are the one who wrote those . . . infamies about Mademoiselle de La Vallicre? Can’t you let people love each other in peace? The King and that girl have done all they could to keep their love secret, and you go spreading the scandal in loathsome terms! The King’s conduct is blame¬worthy, no doubt. He is a young, fiery man who has been married by force to a Princess without wit or beauty.”
He sneered.
“How you defend him, my sweet! Has the Franc-Ripault twisted your heart-strings?”
“No, but I loathe to see a respectable and royal feeling besmirched.” “There’s nothing respectable, or royal, in the world.”
Angelique crossed the room and leaned against the other end of the fire-place. She felt faint and tense. The poet looked up at her. She saw die red points of the flames dance in his eyes.
“Didn’t you know who I was?” he asked.
“Nobody tdd me, and how could I have guessed? Your pen is im¬pious and licentious, whereas you . . .”
Go on.
“You had seemed to me kind and gay.”
“I am kind with little beggar-wenches who weep in hay-boats, and I am ruthless with princes.”
Angelique sighed. She could not seem to get warm. She motioned with her chin towards the door.
“You must go now.”
“Go!” he exclaimed. “Go, when diat dog Sorbonne is only waiting to get his fangs into my hose? And that devil’s policeman is getting his chains ready?”
“They aren’t in the street.”
“Yes, they are. They are waiting for me in the dark.”
“I swear to you they have no inkling that you are here.”
“How do you know? Don’t you know those two pals, my sweet, you who have belonged to Calembredaine’s gang?”
Quickly she motioned him to be silent.
“You see? You yourself feel that they are lying in wait outside in the snow. And you want me to go away!”
“Yes, go away!”
“You are driving me out?”
<<r ’’
I am.
“And yet I haven’t done you any harm, have I?”
“Yes, you have.”
He looked at her searchingly, then held out his hand.
“If that’s so, let’s be reconciled. Come.”
And as she remained motionless:
“We are both of us hunted by the dog. What will become of us if we, too, fall out?”
He continued to hold out his hand.
“Your eyes have become hard and cold like emeralds. They no longer have that sunny light of a little brook under green leaves which seems to be saying: Love me, kiss me. . . .”
“Does the brook say all that?”
“Your eyes do, when I am not your enemy. Do come!”
She yielded suddenly and squatted down beside him. He promptly put his arm around her shoulders.
“You are trembling. You no longer have the self-confident mien of my hostess. Something has frightened you, hurt you. The dog? The police¬man?”
“It’s the dog. And the policeman. And you too, Monsieur Gutter- Poet.”
“Oh, baneful trinity of Paris!”
“Do you, who know everything, have any idea of who I was before 1 joined up with Calcmbredaine?”
He gave a pout of annoyance and pulled a face.
“No. Since I have met you again, I have more or less grasped how you have managed in between and how you got around your innkeeper. But before Calembredaine, well, no, the track stops there.”
“It’s better so.”
“What annoys me is that I have an idea that this devil of a policeman is one up on me and knows all about your past.”
“Are you vying with each other in collecting information?”
“It happens quite frequently that we pass information on to one another.” “At heart, you’re much alike.”
“A little. But there’s a great difference between us, all the same.” “What difference?”
“I can’t kill him, but he can take me for a ride to death. If you hadn’t opened your door to me tonight, I should now be at the Chatelet through his good offices. I’d already have grown three inches thanks to Maitre Aubin’s rack, and tomorrow at dawn I’d have swung ai the end of a rope.” “And why do you say that you can’t kill him?”
“I cannot kill. The sight of blood makes me sick.”
She began to laugh at his grimace of disgust. The poet’s sinewy hand touched her neck.
“When you laugh, you are like a little pigeon.”
He bent over her face. In his tender, mocking smile she saw the dark breach caused by Big Matthieu’s forceps, and it made her want to cry and love this man. '*
“That’s good,” he murmured. “You are no longer frightened. It’s all going away. . . • There is only the snow falling outside, and we here,
snug and warm I don’t often have such a grand lodging! You are
naked under that gown? Yes, I can feel it. Don’t move, my love. . . . Don’t say anything. . . .”
His hand slid, pushed back the gown to follow the line of her shoulder, slipped further down. He laughed as a shiver passed through her.
“Here are the burgeons of spring. And yet it’s winter! . . .”
He took her lips. Then he stretched out before the fire and gently pulled her towards him.
DoInothear,justhark!mysweet,
The brandy-crier in the street?
I do believe, fooling apart,
It’s time, my love, that we should part. . . .
The poet had put on his big hat and his coat full of holes. Dawn had come, thick with snow, and through the whiteness of the silent street the brandy-merchant was stumbling like a bear, muffled up to his nose.
Angelique hailed him. He poured out a small glass of spirits for both of them on the doorstep. When the fellow had passed on, they smiled at each other.
11 Where are you off to, now?”
“To report a new scandal to the people of Paris. Monsieur Brienne caught his wife with her lover this night.”
“This night? How can you possibly know?”
“I know everything. Farewell, my love.”
She held him back by the flap of his coat and said:
“Come back.”
He did come back. He would arrive in the evening, scratch at the window according to a prearranged signal. She would open the door noiselessly. And in the warm little room, beside this garrulous, caustic or loving companion, she would forget the day’s hard work. He would tell her of the latest scandals, at Court and in town. That amused her, for she knew most of the people concerned.
“I am rich with the fears of all those who fear me.”
But he attached no importance to money. She tried in vain to dress him more decently. After a good dinner, which he would accept without even making a move to open his purse, he would disappear for a week, and when he showed up again, hungry, gaunt and grinning, she would question him in vain. Why, since he was on excellent terms with the underworld gangs of Paris, did he never join them in their occasional carousals? He had never put in an appearance at the Tower of Nesle. And yet, as one of the important personages on the Pont-Ncuf, he could have occupied a place of honour. And with all the secrets he knew, he could have made no end of people ‘cough up\
“It’s more fun to make them weep or gnash their teeth,” he would say.
He was willing to be helped only by the women he loved. A little flower-seller, a harlot, a maidservant had the right, after surrendering to his caresses, to pamper him a little. They would tell him: “Eat, little one,” and tenderly watch him wolf down his food.
Then he would fly away. Like the flower-girl, the harlot or the maid-servant, Angelique sometimes felt an urge to hold him back. Lying in the snug warmth of the bed beside this long body, whose embrace was so swift and light, she would pass an arm around his neck and pull him towards her. But already he had opened his eyes, seen the daylight behind the small, lead-framed window-panes. He would jump out of bed and dress hurriedly.
The fact was that he could never stay in one place. He was possessed by a craving which was rare at that time and which in all times has to be dearly paid for: a craving for liberty.